Notes tone unturned

An attempt to scrub the gathering moss off some stones and help them keep rolling smoothly along ... Thoughts on information technology and anything else, by Tony Austin, CEO of Asia/Pacific Computer Services.

As well as gaining valuable insights about your chances of being gobbled by a “Noah’s Ark” you will also learn about the theory of coincidences: winning the Lotto, having the same birthday as someone else in a group, and the true nature of Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretsky’s amazing batting average.

Considering the tips in the Energy Australia article, I wonder how how they should be extended/modified for selecting a reliable doctor, cloud computing vendor, landscape gardener, or any other provider of goods and services. Please have your say below.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

While I followed a technology career (or careers. rather), I have always been very interested in learning foreign languages which started when I studied Latin and French at high school (until the final year, when I dropped them to focus on the sciences).

All these decades on, I still can recall the famous onomatopoeiastetit illa tremens describing (when pronounced appropriately) the quivering of the spear that had been hurled with force into the side of the Trojan horse, so aptly pictured in Virgil’s Aenid Book II.

Another Roman poet, Ovid, was rather good at describing the insidiousness of rumour and how it spreads like wildfire. To quote a translation into English from Ovid’s The Metamorphoses:

There is a place at the centre of the World, between the zones of earth, sea, and sky, at the boundary of the three worlds. From here, whatever exists is seen, however far away, and every voice reaches listening ears. Rumour lives there, choosing a house for herself on a high mountain summit, adding innumerable entrances, a thousand openings, and no doors to bar the threshold. It is open night and day: and is all of sounding bronze. All rustles with noise, echoes voices, and repeats what is heard. There is no peace within: no silence anywhere. Yet there is no clamour, only the subdued murmur of voices, like the waves of the sea, if you hear them far off, or like the sound of distant thunder when Jupiter makes the dark clouds rumble.

Crowds fill the hallways: a fickle populace comes and goes, and, mingling truth randomly with fiction, a thousand rumours wander, and confused words circulate. Of these, some fill idle ears with chatter, others carry tales, and the author adds something new to what is heard. Here is Credulity: here is rash Error, empty Delight, and alarming Fear, sudden Sedition, and Murmurings of doubtful origin. Rumour herself sees everything that happens in the heavens, throughout the ocean, and on land, and inquires about everything on earth.

Rumour raced at once through Libya’s great cities, Rumour, compared with whom no other is as swift. She flourishes by speed, and gains strength as she goes: first limited by fear, she soon reaches into the sky, walks on the ground, and hides her head in the clouds. Earth, incited to anger against the gods, so they say, bore her last, a monster, vast and terrible, fleet-winged and swift-footed, sister to Coeus and Enceladus, who for every feather on her body has as many watchful eyes below (marvellous to tell), as many tongues speaking, as many listening ears. She flies, screeching, by night through the shadows between earth and sky, never closing her eyelids in sweet sleep: by day she sits on guard on tall roof-tops or high towers, and scares great cities, as tenacious of lies and evil, as she is messenger of truth. Now in delight she filled the ears of the nations with endless gossip, singing fact and fiction alike: Aeneas has come, born of Trojan blood, a man whom lovely Dido deigns to unite with: now they’re spending the whole winter together in indulgence, forgetting their royalty, trapped by shameless passion. The vile goddess spread this here and there on men’s lips. Immediately she slanted her course towards King Iarbas and inflamed his mind with words and fuelled his anger.

Rumor is part of our nature and everyone is involved in its spread. It is wrong to think that only one class of people love rumors, because that would be hypocritical. It's almost a requirement in some sections of our society, because you will be marginalized if you do not like gossip. Rumor is defined by a story that is difficult to authenticate, but its aspects appeal to our desire to hurt others. … [here’s a Google translation into English]

It behoves us all to to stop ourselves from perniciously spreading rumours. So, everybody, strenuously resist the urge! But alas, I fear that rumour will be with us forever.

All this 1950s technology history is quite fascinating in and of itself – keeping in mind, for example, that my three young grandsons each have an iPad, with a combined processing power probably greater than all the computing equipment shown in that YouTube video.

The strange thing that happened was that I was struck by an image that flashed past. It was an old IBM wall clock, no longer in production of course (remember that IBM was once in the business of managing work time).

I just had to have such a clock, but with no access to one I decided to construct my own facsimile (and it all cost about $3.00 Australian). Here it is:

I decided to use the solid black IBM logo, after working out that AFAIK the famous IBM 80bar logo wasn’t ever used on clocks.

So now I’m living by IBM time again (after retiring 19 years ago).

Whatever does that indicate about my mental state? Have pity, and say a prayer for me!

About Me

Tony Austin ... Trained in science and engineering, still tend to approach life from a scientist's or engineer's viewpoint, but over the years have picked up skills in sales/marketing, journalism and other non-technical areas. Taught Chemistry / Math / Science in high schools. Joined IBM Australia in 1970, retired in 1995, since then have been an "independent consultant" [an oxymoron]. So now I have over four decades in the IT business, still enjoying it enormously - except, that is, for the same silly mistakes being repeated time and time again in function and interfaces, won't we ever learn? ... Decided to retire from IT consulting at end of 2013 after 44 years in the industry, closed Asia/Pacific Computer Services then, but am still regularly writing technology articles as an industry observer.